Friday, October 7, 2011

Character Sheet Friday: FASA Star Trek Klingons

"Remember When I Used to Be Really Into Nostalgia?"

I found a stash of my old character sheets. I don't really have anything from before high school- I had a group of people I played with in middle and grade school that ended up going to different schools or in different directions. But I did get the chance in high school to play with a bunch of different groups, most of them with players a few years older than me. I got to try out a number of games, including FASA's Star Trek the Role Playing Game. And of course, we couldn't just play basic ST, we had to play a Klingon campaign.

The ST:RPG followed the Traveller model of randomized life path generation. The standard rules, IIRC avoided Traveller's problem with killing yourself during character creation. I think the Kingdom process had that, plus a number of different maimings you could get during your tour of duty. As you can see from the sheet below, your various training cruises and services are recorded prominently, though not used in later play. I kind of miss that form of character generation- one that gives a very specific kind of flavor. Something combining that with point buy is appealing for players who have to travel through similar academy backgrounds- for example a post-school Harry Potter magic campaign, with different lifepath generations for various schools, houses and courses of study.

The actual campaign was kind of a mess, with the players immediately turning it into Paranoia in space*. I think, judging by the sheet, that I was some kind of engineer. I remember our captain, run by a player named Paul, was named K'runch. The rules had all kinds of details on security controls, internal policing and mutinies. I know the doctor attempted to plant a keyed super-virus on the toilet of the Captain, but that ended up not working. Our more elaborate attempt to kill our commander involved a rigged transporter- which he managed to survive, but lost an eye and a leg in the process. Other than that, I don't recall much about the plot or the system. I do know that the rules offered an answer for the old Star Trek/Star Trek movie Klingon appearance discrepancy. Apparently, the old Klingons had been from the portion of the race known as "Human Fusions" which represented a genetic engineer project. Romulan Fusions also existed. This wikipedia article offers some more discussion of that.